Opeth

By Request, Part 1 - Orchid:

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I like Russian Circles. Not familiar with any individual albums/songs but they're a good all instrumental group.

Scale the Summit is another really good instrumental band. The Migration is their best album.
 
Take some hearing protection.

Yes, instrumental.

I'm not that familiar with their discography. They were the opening act for Chelsea Wolfe. I remember a massive sound. Very heavy. The bass grooved (I need to be careful here, since you are into Big Brown Beaver Bassman ;-) ; everyone is probably less impressive for you than him!). Seriously, his bass felt as the leading/guiding instrument. The guitars didn't feature (that much) solos. Just nice sounding stuff. Drummer constantly banged the shit out of his kit.

edit: listening to YouTube, I realize that they have a lot of calm moments as well. The heavy stuff was more memorable for me.
 
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Hehe yes. And maybe because he was so loud, he was so impressive. But listening to YouTube I find the guitar work more interesting. And the drummer is important too with his patterns. Sometimes the music feels as black metal (both atmosphere and guitar) with Red Hot Chilli Pepper drums

Indeed, one guitar player.

Night Prowler said:
Since you're in the Opeth thread, you should really listen to some Opeth, Cried :p
Click to expand...
Yes!
 
Russian Circles are an incredible 3 piece with a massive sound...saw them a couple of years ago. Memorial is the album to go for as an introduction. Headphones on, lie back and enjoy the ride...

Oh, this is an Opeth thread? I saw them last night at the Sydney Opera House. They played for 3 hours, a double set. The second set was dedicated entirely to Deliverance & Damnation.

Great show, bizarre watching a prog death metal gig at the Opera House. A sit down show (except us up in the dress circle), people sitting in the boxes and behind stage as they do for orchestras. We drank champagne instead of beer.
 
So, as an illiterate, instinctual, idontknowwhatimdoing bassist of six years, I decided to learn to identify time signatures. Gonna put myself to the test here. Those of you who know how time signatures work, am I correct in these following statements:

The intro to Windowpane is in 6/4
The outro to Closure is in 9/8
The intro to Deliverance is in 7/8
 
Windowpane is also correct. Closure is straight 4/4 though, how do you get 9/8?
 
Windowpane's intro would be written in 6/8, but drum-wise it actually alternates every measure between 6/8 and 3/4. The rest of the song, if I recall correctly, is in 4/4.
 
It's all in the drums - where the "accents" (usually snare hits) fall.

Here's Wikipedia's version of it...

3/4 is a simple signature that represents three quarter notes. It has a basic feel of (Bold denotes a stressed beat):

one two three (as in a waltz)
Each quarter note might comprise two eighth-notes (quavers) giving a total of six such notes, but it still retains that three-in-a-bar feel:
one and two and three and

6/8: Theoretically, this can be thought of as the same as the six-quaver form of 3/4 above with the only difference being that the eighth note is selected as the one-beat unit. But whereas the six quavers in 3/4 had been in three groups of two, 6/8 is practically understood to mean that they are in two groups of three, with a two-in-a-bar feel (Bold denotes a stressed beat):

one and a, two and a
or
one two three, four five six

Essentially, it's the same amount of notes but different accents of them. For Windowpane, the beat is as follows:

o = kick
O = snare
x = cymbal

6/8: oxoOxo
3/4: oxoxOx

Rinse and repeat, at least for the intro riff and its reprises. I believe the rest of the song is in 4/4.

For ease of simplicity, some tabs and sheet music will not differentiate between these bars because they're primarily focused on melody instruments and not percussion. The difference between 6/8 and 3/4 is not mathematical, but rather a "feel." 6/8 is a "triplet" groove, where 3/4, much like 4/4, is a "straight" groove.

Two excellent non-Opeth songs that feature the same guitar riffs but where the drummer changes the beat underneath to make it sound like an entirely new riff (due to the accents) are the solo section in Dream Theater's "Panic Attack" and the verses of Symphony X's "Prometheus (I Am Alive)." It might give you a clearer understanding of this.

Hope it helps!
 
I've gained new appreciation for the Royal Albert Hall show these days. I thought Mikael sounded awful when I first heard it when it came out, but compared to how he growls today, I can tolerate this :p

I especially like the ending of this one and Axe's addition of blastbeats:
 
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